Network Access and Permissions?

Businesses are always looking for and identifying risks that can disrupt or destroy their company.  For IT professionals risk comes in who has access to the network and its devices.  Network Access and Permissions (NAAP) is one way to reduce risk.

There are many different access controls.  The most commonly used one is user related controls or role-based access control.  This is giving users access to only those devices and resources that are needed to complete their jobs.  Active Directory is one way to control access of users.  Users are given access to certain data and devices based on their job.  The easiest way to do this is to create user groups. Financial users would have access to data that engineers would not.  When the user is placed in their group, they are given the privileges assigned to that group.

The goals of NAAP are:

Authentication → confirm the user’s creentials against the Active Directory

Authorization → allow user access to the assigned resources

 Audit → creates a user activity trail that can be analyzed if something uncommon were to occur

Containment/Confidentiality →  business intellectual propery through policy enforcement

Assess a device’s security posture →  allow or block access on the security check

Monitor Bring your own Devices (BYOD) →  show which BYOD are authorized to access and denying a device that is not authorized and could add great risk to your network.

Without proper NAAP, your entire network becomes vulnerable to viruses and other threats.  By limiting access to role-based, you are limiting how far a virus or ransomware threat can go on your network.  With the increasing IoT and BYOD devices, managing and controlling access to your network is more difficult to maintain and should be a priority.

You need to understand what is on your network and the risk that it brings.  Protect your data and your users from cybercriminals.  Setting up Access and Permissions is the first step to stopping cybercrime at your company.